Read Online Nocturne of Remembrance by Shichiri Nakayama - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Shichiri Nakayama
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that one need not testify against one’s will, I obtained the following freely provided testimony.
1. I am being questioned about the death of my husband, Shingo Tsuda, in the bathroom of our residence at about 9:00 p.m.on May 5th of this year. My family relations are just as I discussed previously (May 20, 2011). Today, I will talk about the circumstances at the time of the incident.
2. My husband, Shingo, used to be the head of development for a firm that designs computer software. Our existence was stable then, but after the company was restructured three years ago, he remained unemployed. In the family besides me are elder daughter Miyuki and younger daughter Rinko, who are both of an age where money is needed for their continued education. I encouraged Shingo many times to find a new job, but perhaps because he was too haughty he would not readily seek work. In time he became what you might call a day trader; shut up in his room, he began to invest in the stock market. He poured in all his severance pay and provided almost nothing toward living expenses. In the beginning, he seemed to be making some profit and was in a good mood, but the “Lehman Shock” came in September of that year and burdened him with a huge amount of unrealized losses. Of his nearly eight million yen in severance pay, only 400,000 yen was left.
3. Even without any cash reserves, Shingo would not go to the government employment agency. I begged him to at least apply for unemployment compensation, but he said that such behavior was beneath him and didn’t pay attention to my pleading. Having no other choice, I began working part-time at an accounting office in our neighborhood. Before marrying, I had worked in another accounting office, so I was able to learn the job right away. Also working at that office was an accountant named Kenichi Yoshiwaki. Thus I was performing housework on top of working part-time, but Shingo, as usual, stayed shut up in his room and continued to trade stocks. Since he didn’t have any cash reserves to buy new stock, it seems that he was looking for a good time to sell hisshriveled stock holdings and was spending the rest of the time just looking at things on the Internet. He said that he was a white-collar worker and therefore not suited for jobs where he had to move around and sweat. Whenever he came out of his room, I would tell him to get another job, so naturally he stopped coming out. I think that in the past three years he went outside the house only two or three times. I’d been able to get a part-time job, but we still had a mortgage and with my income alone it was really difficult to manage the budget. We burnt through our savings and were in a really difficult situation. I tore through the ads in the newspaper every morning to see where I could buy food at even a yen less. I now think that paying such minute attention to those things drove me to the wall.
4. Shingo’s daily existence became one where he only came out of his room to eat or take a bath. If he said anything, it was that his stocks would see a reversal and hit the maximum allowable single-day gain or some such nonsense, so no one in the family took notice of him anymore. As a result he began to eat at a different time than the rest of us. His lack of exercise must have taken a toll; before, he had been slim, but now he became unsightly overweight with a pot belly. In the meantime, Mr. Yoshiwaki at the office was very nice to me, and we went out to eat together a number of times. He was the same age as my husband, but with a good reputation as an accountant, he was someone that had a promising future. I gathered from little things that he said and did that he cared for me. Before long, I began to imagine myself separating from Shingo and getting together with Mr. Yoshiwaki. Some time passed like that, and one day Shingo and I had an argument over how the head of a household is supposed to behave, during which I inadvertently said that there
1. I am being questioned about the death of my husband, Shingo Tsuda, in the bathroom of our residence at about 9:00 p.m.on May 5th of this year. My family relations are just as I discussed previously (May 20, 2011). Today, I will talk about the circumstances at the time of the incident.
2. My husband, Shingo, used to be the head of development for a firm that designs computer software. Our existence was stable then, but after the company was restructured three years ago, he remained unemployed. In the family besides me are elder daughter Miyuki and younger daughter Rinko, who are both of an age where money is needed for their continued education. I encouraged Shingo many times to find a new job, but perhaps because he was too haughty he would not readily seek work. In time he became what you might call a day trader; shut up in his room, he began to invest in the stock market. He poured in all his severance pay and provided almost nothing toward living expenses. In the beginning, he seemed to be making some profit and was in a good mood, but the “Lehman Shock” came in September of that year and burdened him with a huge amount of unrealized losses. Of his nearly eight million yen in severance pay, only 400,000 yen was left.
3. Even without any cash reserves, Shingo would not go to the government employment agency. I begged him to at least apply for unemployment compensation, but he said that such behavior was beneath him and didn’t pay attention to my pleading. Having no other choice, I began working part-time at an accounting office in our neighborhood. Before marrying, I had worked in another accounting office, so I was able to learn the job right away. Also working at that office was an accountant named Kenichi Yoshiwaki. Thus I was performing housework on top of working part-time, but Shingo, as usual, stayed shut up in his room and continued to trade stocks. Since he didn’t have any cash reserves to buy new stock, it seems that he was looking for a good time to sell hisshriveled stock holdings and was spending the rest of the time just looking at things on the Internet. He said that he was a white-collar worker and therefore not suited for jobs where he had to move around and sweat. Whenever he came out of his room, I would tell him to get another job, so naturally he stopped coming out. I think that in the past three years he went outside the house only two or three times. I’d been able to get a part-time job, but we still had a mortgage and with my income alone it was really difficult to manage the budget. We burnt through our savings and were in a really difficult situation. I tore through the ads in the newspaper every morning to see where I could buy food at even a yen less. I now think that paying such minute attention to those things drove me to the wall.
4. Shingo’s daily existence became one where he only came out of his room to eat or take a bath. If he said anything, it was that his stocks would see a reversal and hit the maximum allowable single-day gain or some such nonsense, so no one in the family took notice of him anymore. As a result he began to eat at a different time than the rest of us. His lack of exercise must have taken a toll; before, he had been slim, but now he became unsightly overweight with a pot belly. In the meantime, Mr. Yoshiwaki at the office was very nice to me, and we went out to eat together a number of times. He was the same age as my husband, but with a good reputation as an accountant, he was someone that had a promising future. I gathered from little things that he said and did that he cared for me. Before long, I began to imagine myself separating from Shingo and getting together with Mr. Yoshiwaki. Some time passed like that, and one day Shingo and I had an argument over how the head of a household is supposed to behave, during which I inadvertently said that there
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